That couldn’t have gone much better. Cliff Lee was superb in a complete-game six hitter against the Yankees in Game 1 in New York. Not many pitchers can pull off a feat as monumental as that, but Lee was focused from the get go after striking out Derek Jeter to begin the festivities.

Pedro Martinez takes the ball in Game 2. If you said in April (hell, even July) that Pedro Martinez would be starting in the second game of the World Series AGAINST THE YANKEES, someone probably would have smacked you. My how the baseball world turns.

Martinez will look to win his seventh postseason game tonight against A.J Burnett. Pedro called himself “the most influential player” to ever play at Yankee Stadium, and now he must back up that claim. For his career, he has face New York six times in the postseason (five starts) and has allowed 18 earned runs over 35 1/3 innings of work (4.60 ERA). Pedro has called the Yankees “his daddy” before, but let’s hope the roles are reversed tonight.

A.J. Burnett is not as familiar with the spotlight as Pedro Martinez, and has had his ups and downs during his first trip to the postseason. Burnett got knocked around by the Angels in his latest start, going six innings while allowing six earned runs over eight hits. The 32-year old throws hard, but has been known to miss the plate a time or two. In the regular season, Burnett had 17 wild pitches, the most in the American League, and in the playoffs he has already walked 10 batters in 18 1/3 innings.

With that said, the Phillies need to use the same patience they showed with C.C. Sabathia last night. Burnett’s pitch counts will spike if he’s wild from the get go, which could very well happen in this high pressure situation. With the Yanks down a game already, Burnett has some weight on those shoulders.

Chase Utley gave the offense a shot last night, belting two home runs off of C.C., who had previously given up just three jacks this whole season to lefty hitters.

For the Yankees this evening, you will not see right fielder Nick Swisher in the starting lineup. Late word out of New York is that Swisher has been benched in favor of Jerry Hairston Jr. Jose Molina takes over for Jorge Posada at catcher, as he normally does with A.J. Burnett.

According to the twitter of Andy Martino, Greg Dobbs was sent back to Philadelphia with the flu, giving the Phillies one less bench option.

Matt Stairs is your DH tonight, taking over for Ben Francisco with a right hander on the hill for N.Y.

Your Gameday Beer – Presidente
In honor of tonight’s Phillies starter, we’re serving up the Dominican Republic’s most popular domestic beer. Like other Caribbean beers, Presidente has the appearance of an American Light Pilsner. The taste is that of a macrobrew with corn and grain being the predominant flavors and skunked being the predominant aroma. However, if you have a cold Presidente on a hot Dominican day, there are few things finer. Eat it with as much shrimp as you can get your hands on. – By Brian

game 2 1 hour 6 minutes away, nice to be home for the whole thing. Pedro is pitching with house money tonight, would not be surprised if he hits A-Rod his first at bat, not saying he should or will but just that I would not be surprised if it happened. Should be another good game either way. Would love to take 2 on the road.
What is up with NY line up, how has it changed from last night. Pasada DH, Malina behind the plate, is Swisher out of RF? Post it if you know it

sorry did not notice it at the bottom of the post I am an idiot. Harriston instead of .123 Swisher and we all knew Pasada would be out. Hopefully Pedro pitches well and the bats start hitting right away.
One Hour left, and for you wine drinkers out there there is a red wine call Bastardo, and it is actually really good, may be the drink for next season. Notice not a lot of those Yankee fans here today, especially the ones who were saying how much bette CC was then Cliff.
I will take Cliff, behind the back, tap you on your ass, basket Catch, Lee this year in the Playoff and the WFS.
It is not over by a long shot, but two in the Bronx would be nice, even if I do have tickets to game 5

I like that Charlie is putting him out there. I like how Pedro is sort of smack talking. I think he is protecting his team from a lot of media attention. That allows for more focus on the game. Good teamwork Charlie and Pedro!

This Philles team is hard to root against. They are a really great team. I remember some of them early 2000 teams with players like Abreu, Bell, and Lieberthal, and thinking they were good teams. But there was no player I would root for. They were very unlikeable. But this team is great to watch.

I hope the bullpen is ready, I don’t see the Phils getting much more than 6 innings in tonight. Throwing a lot of pitches. Granted its working out so far but he is definitely not attacking guys but more so dancing around the strike zone and getting guys to chase some bad pitches. So far I am liking it, I just don’t know how long he will last.

why are swinging at so many first pitches? one reason we chase pitches so fast is we usually make them work. only a few at bats tonight we have made them work. most of the other time we have been swinging at first or second pitch.

Regarding Hamels….no negativity please. He needs our support. He knows he’s been shakey. He got us to the show last season. He needs good fan support if he is ever going to have a chance to pitch strong. And that is what we need from him. So Let’s Go Hamels!

Alright maybe this will piss off the Phillies enough to do something….yeah Charlie made a bad decision with leaving pedro in for that inning…now Pedro has to leave too a bunch of boos for a stellar performance

@Jeff-BS. Pedro wasn’t showing any signs of fatigue, and there was no obvious reason to pull him. Facing the bottom of the order, he’d gone 6 innings giving up just 2 runs and he had looked good. Charlie didn’t cost us the game. I mean, is the game over yet? Last I looked, we’re in the 7th inning, down by 2. How many times have you seen this team come back? We’ve seen Rivera blow saves, and we’ve seen the Phillies come back from down by more than 2 entering the 8th inning. Relax. Damn.

It’s funny, NY and their fans keep saying that Philly and its fans are classless, yet the NY Times puts out articles poking fun at the players and various trolls come onto this site and don’t just make posts but make comments about players, use derogatory names for their user name and all around act like the very things they curse Philly fan’s for being.

If Phillies fans are classless then consider me proud to be a phillies fan.

Umps are now even. Only thing terrible is the hitting and running by the beloved Phillies. They look sleepy! C’mon! Let’s Go Phillies! You cannot rest on only ONE victory. The rules require FOUR WINS to get the big trophy!

Did anyone else read that the reason Charlie let Lee pitch the whole game yesterday was that he wasn’t comfortable using Lee on 3 days rest and thus he was willing to let Lee go as long as needed for game 1? Cause Charlie supposedly said that.

If the Yankees hold on and win, the Phillies will have done what any road team in the World Series must to do stay alive in the series – they split the first two games on the road. Given the said scenario, the Phillies would return home with a series split. The edge, arguably, then goes to the Phillies once they’re back in Citizen’s Bank Park. If the Phillies lose tonight, they’d still be in a great position to take the series.

Frankly, I don’t care who wins this World Series. I just hope that a fastball “accidentally” lands on Jimmy Rollins’ mouth. A dislocated or broken jaw would keep him from talking anymore bullshit.

I agree, and I can’t believe I am saying this, with the Met’s fan. I really do wish Jimmy would quit while he is ahead and just shut his mouth. He is bound to get it wrong sometime and I was really hoping he would not make any predictions on who would win this series but alas he did not.

I didn’t want to mention it until now, but Manuel going with Martinez tonight was pretty Gdam stupid. I’m not saying he pitched Horrible but hes not a #2 guy…Atleast not on this team. Hamels should of pitched this game. Hes our #2 guy…Who cares if hes had a bad post season so far…Thats why he gets what he gets paid, and why Pedro only got 1 mil this season

Oh well………off to the best city for baseball! Let’s Go Phillies!
Fun night again chatting with you guys! See you all on Saturday! Hey…one good thing, I have Game 5 tickets so I am now guaranteed a game! Would rather a sweep though!
LET”S GO PHILLIES! WTG PEDRO!

Yeah Burnett had a decent two seamer, a few decent curveballs and pitched with conviction but we were too patient and could have punished him on some of those first strike cookies he put up there. We didn’t adjust to the strike zone which I thought was pretty consistent and Burnett wasn’t really mixing it up all that much but he made the most out of what he had. Howard really was taking pitches that were too borderline . I do think it’ll be like Padilla, now that we’ve seen it and can look back at his pitch patterns we’ll nail him to the wall. He won’t be getting away with some of those hangers. A Rivera I feel much better about. He did get a call but so did we the innig prior, but that being said we nail him to the next unless Feliz is the final AB. Lets Hope Hamels shows up. Pedro what a great performance nothing to be ashamed of….

Chris I – Hamels hasn’t pitched like a #2 at all in the playoffs. I’ll give him the game his wife went into labor, but he has not risen the occasion since. Pedro pitched a gem…that HR by Matsui was like UT’s first one last night…that was a Yankee stadium gift.

Manny – watch the post game on CSN…they gave a good explaination…it was a give and take type of thing…if Utley had struck out then Rollins would have been caught in a rundown between 2nd and 3rd. I hope the line-up will make some in game adjustments with Petite. Work counts when the pitcher is struggling and know when to be aggressive. They shouldn’t have been taking so many pitches a second time thru the line-up…I mean that was the time to be more aggressive…too many 1-2 counts leaves you vulnerable.